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Lot Essay
The present pastel belongs to a complex cluster of symbolically charged representations of the female nude that Gauguin executed during the first half of 1889. Illustrating syncretist ideas about life and death as related to the temptation and fall of the Biblical Eve, the works have been called the artist's "defining images of woman" as well as the "key to much of Gauguin's symbolism" (V. Jirat-Wasiutynski, op. cit., p. 139; W.V. Andersen, "Gauguin and a Peruvian Mummy," Burlington Magazine, April 1967, p. 238).
The crux of the sequence is a pair of large oil paintings, probably conceived as pendants: Life and Death (W. 335; Mahmoud Khalil Museum, Cairo) and In the Waves (W. 336; Cleveland Museum of Art). In the Waves was one of two pictures from this important cluster of works that Gauguin included in the landmark Volpini exhibition in the summer of 1889. The other was a small watercolor that depicts the crouching figure from Life and Death as the Biblical Eve, a snake twined around the tree behind her (W. 333; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio).
The present work is one of two full-sized pastel drawings for Life and Death, which a recent monograph describes as "the nucleus of the group" (V. Jirat-Wasiutynski, op. cit., p. 138; Private collection). A pastel depicting the upper half of the woman in the waves may likewise have served originally as a preparatory study, which was later cut down to produce an independent work (W. 337; Private collection). Gauguin was haunted by this set of images and returned to them repeatedly in the following decade. The crouching figure and the woman in the waves provide the background for Nirvana, Portrait of Meyer de Haan, executed late in 1889 (W. 320; Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford), and also feature prominently in two wood sculptures from 1890, Soyez Amoureuses (Gray 76; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Soyez Mysterieuses (Gray 87; Private collection). The figure in the present work re-appears as well at the extreme left of Gauguin's celebrated 1897 frieze, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (W. 561; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
The thematic implications of the crouching nude are unusually rich and nuanced. In the McNay Eve, the figure is explicitly linked to the renunciation of sexual temptation. She presses her hands to her ears to block out the tempting blandishments of the snake, alluded to in an inscription on the reverse of the work: "pas écouter li...li menteur" ("no listen him...him liar"). At the same time, the figure serves unéquivocally as an image of death. Wayne Andersen has convincingly shown that the distinctive pose was based on a Peruvian mummy that Gauguin had sketched at the Trocadéro early in 1889. In the Cairo Life and Death, which the artist himself titled, the pink-fleshed, frontal bather clearly signifies life while the blue-tinged, crouching figure symbolizes death instead. The depiction of Eve in a death pose functions in part as a traditional image of the wages of sin, evoking the suffering that Eve brought into the world through the fall. In addition, the figure visually dramatizes the link that Gauguin frequently posited in his writings between death and the refusal of temptation -- the flip side of which is the life-affirming embrace of sexuality represented by the woman plunging into the sea.
The crux of the sequence is a pair of large oil paintings, probably conceived as pendants: Life and Death (W. 335; Mahmoud Khalil Museum, Cairo) and In the Waves (W. 336; Cleveland Museum of Art). In the Waves was one of two pictures from this important cluster of works that Gauguin included in the landmark Volpini exhibition in the summer of 1889. The other was a small watercolor that depicts the crouching figure from Life and Death as the Biblical Eve, a snake twined around the tree behind her (W. 333; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio).
The present work is one of two full-sized pastel drawings for Life and Death, which a recent monograph describes as "the nucleus of the group" (V. Jirat-Wasiutynski, op. cit., p. 138; Private collection). A pastel depicting the upper half of the woman in the waves may likewise have served originally as a preparatory study, which was later cut down to produce an independent work (W. 337; Private collection). Gauguin was haunted by this set of images and returned to them repeatedly in the following decade. The crouching figure and the woman in the waves provide the background for Nirvana, Portrait of Meyer de Haan, executed late in 1889 (W. 320; Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford), and also feature prominently in two wood sculptures from 1890, Soyez Amoureuses (Gray 76; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Soyez Mysterieuses (Gray 87; Private collection). The figure in the present work re-appears as well at the extreme left of Gauguin's celebrated 1897 frieze, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (W. 561; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
The thematic implications of the crouching nude are unusually rich and nuanced. In the McNay Eve, the figure is explicitly linked to the renunciation of sexual temptation. She presses her hands to her ears to block out the tempting blandishments of the snake, alluded to in an inscription on the reverse of the work: "pas écouter li...li menteur" ("no listen him...him liar"). At the same time, the figure serves unéquivocally as an image of death. Wayne Andersen has convincingly shown that the distinctive pose was based on a Peruvian mummy that Gauguin had sketched at the Trocadéro early in 1889. In the Cairo Life and Death, which the artist himself titled, the pink-fleshed, frontal bather clearly signifies life while the blue-tinged, crouching figure symbolizes death instead. The depiction of Eve in a death pose functions in part as a traditional image of the wages of sin, evoking the suffering that Eve brought into the world through the fall. In addition, the figure visually dramatizes the link that Gauguin frequently posited in his writings between death and the refusal of temptation -- the flip side of which is the life-affirming embrace of sexuality represented by the woman plunging into the sea.